'If an elevator is in trouble the safest place to be is inside the elevator' — Vertical transportation industry axiom

Worth remembering should you find yourself stuck in one.

Colson Whitehead's above-pictured 1999 novel, in which "... two factions at the Department of Elevator Inspectors — the Empiricists and the Intuitionists — wage war on each other ... [and] Intuitionist Lila Mae, the first black elevator inspector, faces bedlam when an elevator freefalls on her watch and the mysterious notebooks from the founder of Intuitionism suddenly appear," is superb.

Here's an excerpt.